WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE

Engine Failure During My First Solo Trip Abroad

We emergency landed in the middle of the South Pacific!

As I struggled to hoist my carry-on into the overhead cabin, a little boy in a nearby row caught my attention. He must have been two, or maybe three, with cute little dimples under these great big blue eyes that were staring straight at me. Have you ever noticed what happens when a baby stares at you? It’s both inevitable and pathetic.

You feel lucky. Special. Chosen.

It was my first solo flight out of the country and up until this moment, I had felt invisible. In LAX, a man in a suit bumped into me during security then reached around and grabbed his briefcase which pelted me in the face on its way off the conveyor belt. I was already nervous about my fourteen-hour trip from California to Australia and this incident was a sore reminder that the people who knew and loved me, thousands of miles away in Massachusetts, would be even further once I hopped on the first plane.

I made it to my connecting flight in Honolulu, no problem. Only 10 hours and 38 minutes left to go. I hadn’t technically left the country yet but still, I felt proud, and it was nice to be acknowledged, even by an infant. So I did what we all do when a baby stares at us. Determined to keep his attention and even more determined to make him laugh, I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes. A lame attempt, I know, but give me a break. It had been a long day.

Not only did the boy not laugh, he didn’t even flinch. He just kept staring at me with these ice-cold, demonic eyes until he spat out three words I’ll never forget.

“Plane…

Go…

Boom.”

Now this, he found hilarious. He exploded into laughter, bouncing on his mother’s lap, blowing spit all over himself and the seatback in front of him.

“You mean zoom,” his mother quickly corrected him. “The plane goes ZOOM, right Ryder?” Nice save, mom, I thought to myself before he said it again.

“Plane…

Go…

BOOM!”

He really emphasized the boom part this time and laughed so hard that a lime green snot-rocket shot straight out of his tiny nostril. His mother spent the next thirty seconds wiping down the vicinity with her cardigan sleeve while aggressively apologizing like I might report her son to the authorities.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I won’t tell anyone your baby has a bomb.” The woman frowned and turned her head, making it clear where her son got his bad sense of humor. I shoved headphones into my ears and pretended the whole thing never happened. It was my first time traveling outside the country alone and I was afraid it was starting to show.

Six hours later, I heard the announcement no one wants to hear on a plane. “Excuse me, passengers. Please return your seatbacks and tray tables to their full upright position and make sure your seat belt is securely fastened. We are rerouting the aircraft and will be emergency landing in” — I swear this flustered flight attendant said — “the Congo. Our captain will have more information in just a few moments.”

“The Congo?” the boy’s mother shouted at me. It took everything in me not to point at her baby and say, “HE DID THIS!”

I looked out the window and saw nothing but an endless ocean. No signs of land up ahead or down below. I understood why the flight attendant sounded so nervous during her announcement. She was lying. We weren’t landing in the Congo. After all, I’m pretty sure the Congo is in Africa and Africa’s on the other side of the world.

We were about to crash land in the middle of the South Pacific!!!!!!

I started frantically searching for the lone Xanax I had stashed in my personal item as Alanis Morrisette’s Isn’t It Ironic started playing on my Spotify. Like all of the lyrics in that song, there was nothing ironic about this situation. It was unfortunate, yes, but not ironic. I thought about what my friends and family would say at my funeral.

“We knew this would happen. We told her not to go, but she just had to. She just had to leave the country by herself and now look at her. Dead.”

Maybe this was a bit ironic. “Where is that goddamn Xanax?” I ripped through the superfluous contents of my backpack, knowing I couldn’t take any of it where I was going. “Gotch ya!” I said to the pill before dry-swallowing it and nearly choking on my own panic.

That’s when the pilot finally got on the loudspeaker. I ripped my headphones out as if they had scolded my ears, and prepared to listen to the most important announcement of my life. I wish I could tell you everything the pilot said that day. But I was terrified, alright? And fear lowers your IQ.

It was something along the lines of, “The filter in one of our engines has failed/broken/exploded/kicked the can and we cannot make it to Sydney without it. Don’t be alarmed if and when you see gasoline gushing out of the wings. This is apparently totally normal. We cannot land with the weight of gasoline in the aircraft. We’ll be arriving in American Samoa shortly…”

I stopped listening after I heard the word American. So we weren’t in Africa. Bummer. I could have crossed another continent off the bucket list. The screen clarified my confusion about The Congo. We were landing in Pago Pago, pronounced “Pongo Pongo,” an American territory I wouldn’t have known existed if it wasn’t for this #unplannedadventure.

The pilot’s announcement made me feel a bit of relief, especially after looking out the window and seeing an island in the distance. But then the gasoline started dumping and I knew the Xanax hadn’t quite kicked in yet.

I scanned the people around me and was surprised to find only a few confused faces, but no true panic like mine. They seemed to have faith in our pilot, in our luck that there even was an island out here to land on. Of course, they all had partners or siblings or parents or friends with them to calm their nerves. Not only was I alone in my travels, but I was also alone in my row, which I had stupidly celebrated mere hours earlier.

But now, all I wanted was someone to talk to, someone to touch me and say, “Isn’t this wild? I’m so glad I have you.”

I thought of my ex. I thought of my parents. I thought of my sister and friends. And while I no longer thought I was going to die, I thought of death and how very lonely it must be, like a helpless girl on a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific with a cellphone but no service to say, “Don’t worry, I’m OK. It’s beautiful out here, I wish you could see it.”

Thirty-eight hours after departing California, I landed in Australia. My sleepover in Pago Pago was less of a sleepover and more of a nap, as I made a few friends at the bar, drank Vailima beers, and went night swimming at our beachfront hotel. Around 3 AM, a very large local man nearly busted his fist through my hotel room door. “PLANE’S HERE, EVERYBODY UP!” I shot off the bed like Emily Rose during her exorcism. I had never been so confused about where, when, why, or how I got there.

Sleep-deprived, I boarded the brand new plane. The morning was a blur of numb emotion. I sat comfortably in my empty row for what felt like an eternity shoved into a split second, as the restless attendants checked every stranger back with a single clipboard. I looked out the window as a great big, glowing ball rose over the mountains and cast a blinding light onto the blue expanse of water I only slightly remember swimming in the night before. It must have been 5 or 6 AM, but I didn’t ask. For the first time in my life, time didn’t matter. We still had a six-hour flight to Sydney, which was 21 hours ahead of Pago Pago’s timezone. It was irrelevant. Everything, even me.

When I finally stepped out of the Sydney airport into the warmth of a brand new country, it could have been any hour of the day, any day of the week. My phone took a moment to recalculate. Thursday, February 14th. Valentine’s Day. I kissed the ground beneath my feet like a long-lost lover and called my Aussie friend. It felt so good to hear a familiar voice. I had to hold back tears.

“Oh my God, you’re alive,” she gasped into my ear. “I’m on my way!” Even after hanging up, I couldn’t stop saying it.

“I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.”

Liv is a freelance writer, editor, and marketer who travels the world while documenting her experiences. If you liked this story, you may also enjoy this one about staying in a stranger’s van.

Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed with up-to-date curations from our editors:👇

We now offer exclusive writing services for our members. Discover how you can take advantage of our editing services and more.